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Contextualism in Context: Interview with Michael Williams AVANT , Vol. XI, No. 2 ISSN: 2082-6710 avant.edu.pl/en DOI: 10.26913/avant.2020.02.03 Contextualism in Context: Interview with Michael Williams Luca Corti University of Porto MLAG – Mind, Language, and Action Group (Institute of Philosophy, U.Porto) luca.corti @ hotmail.de Diana Couto University of Barcelona BIAP/LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy MLAG – Mind, Language, and Action Group (Institute of Philosophy, U.Porto) dpcouto @ ub.edu Received 4 October 2019; accepted 5 October 2019; published 10 January 2020 "Contextualism" is usually taken as the name for a very general view that can be found in different areas: from semantics to epistemology, from philosophy of language to philosophy of action. According to contextualism the role of context is necessary for an utterance, knowledge claim or action to have meaning or be intelligible. In philosophy of language, the idea is that what an utterance expresses depends on the context, which therefore has a role in determining its truth-conditions. One of the most renowned “radical contextualists”, Charles Travis writes: “words may have any of many semantics, compatibly with what they mean. Words in fact vary their semantics from one speaking of them to another” (2008, p. 123). Epistemic contextualism, on the other hand, is the view that certain features of the context affect the standards that a subject S must meet in order for S' beliefs to count as knowledge (or, alternatively, for a sentence attributing knowledge to S to be true). Knowledge attributions are context-sensitive. Like the other forms of contextualism, epistemic contextualism comes in various flavors. A lot depends on how one defines the notion of context. However, the position came into much focus as a potential response to the problem of skepticism. Michael Williams, British philosopher, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor at Johns Hopkins University, can be considered as one of the founding fathers of these views, and one of the most prominent opponents of the so-called “epistemological realism”. In his books Unnatural Doubts (1991) and Problems of Knowledge (2001) he carried out a “theoretical diagnosis” of skepticism and put forward a groundbreaking response to it by suggesting that the skeptic is committed to an unsustainable form of epistemological realism which, therefore, should be rejected. This realism, roughly, is 1 Interview with Michael Williams not meant to deny that we have knowledge of an objective, mind-independent reality, but ra- ther that the entities of the epistemological inquiry are context-invariant. Alongside with other renowned contemporary epistemologists such as Stewart Cohen and Keith DeRose, Williams’ work has been path-breaking for “contextualism”, especially when it comes to his positions on skepticism that have been prompted discussion ever since he first advanced them. In addition to his work on epistemology, Williams’ is also attentive to topics in the history of philosophy, and in particular the historical development of the skeptical tradition, as well as the philosophy of language and Wittgenstein. With regard to the former, he has argued that the modern and contemporary skeptical arguments differ significantly from those developed in the ancient philosophy. With regard to the latter, he has been concerned with two issues: the distinction between “contextualism” and “relativism” and the so-called new wave ap- proach to Wittgensteinian “hinge Epistemology”. The resonance William’s work has with fields other than epistemology such as the ones just mentioned are quite surprising. Inspired by the work of Wittgenstein, Ayer, and Sellars, his chiseled arguments have been carefully discussed in important intellectual circles. He un- doubtedly deserves a prominent place in the history of contemporary philosophy. This interview was carried out on 13 December 2018 as Michael Williams was in Porto for a meeting of the Contextualism Network organised by the MLAG – Mind, Language, and Ac- tion Research Group (Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto). We would like to thank him for his willingness to reply to our questions. LUCA CORTI & DIANA COUTO: To begin with, we would like to ask you about your phi- losophical and biographical path. Can you tell us something about the main stages of your intellectual development and its most important turning points (also in terms of both your interests in certain topics and the answers you gave to the most relevant ques- tions)? MICHAEL WILLIAMS: I have a somewhat strange background. I crossed from one side of the street to the other, so to speak. I was an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1960s and eventually fell under the spell of A. J. Ayer. I met him through a class he used to give called “Informal Instruction”, where each week they read a paper or a chapter of a book. It wasn't a lecture course, there was just open discussion. Of course, it was Freddy Ayer’s show. The question, in a way, was always: “Who is the second cleverest person in the room?” . I was a poor boy from the provinces. At first I sat there wondering “What am I doing here?”, but I eventually began to take part. There were a lot of graduate students there too. I remember one time, I think we were reading something on Quine, and somebody in the group asked a question and Ayer said: “Hmm. Good question. One for you I think, Williams”. After I finished my undergraduate degree I stayed as a postdoctoral student under Ayer’s su- pervision for one year. But I wasn't enjoying Oxford really very much, because I've been there as an undergraduate and staying on in the same place as a post-graduate was too much the 2 Contextualism in Context same. I saw a little advertisement on the back of the College entrance door about a scheme being run by the University of Chicago. It was for a young graduate student from Oxford to come over for one academic year and do some part-time teaching. I thought: “That seems interesting!”. So I applied and I got the job. When I came to America I was very impressed by Chicago, by the graduate students there and, in a way, by the American graduate education. It was much more organized than Oxford. The American graduate education was more structured: there were courses and an oral exam on your thesis topic. I thought I would apply to graduate school in America, so I did it and applied to a couple of places. I thought “If I get in, I will stay; if I don't, I will go back to Oxford”. I ended up going to Princeton, and this was quite a change from Ayer who was a paradigm logical empiricist. In Princeton I fell under the spell of Richard Rorty when he was writing Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). I don't believe people look much at the Preface of that book, but he mentions two people as having read it in manuscript, and I’m one of them. So I was very close to him, and of course it turned me around. I've been a critic of the epistemological tradition ever since, and I feel I know it from the inside, having initially studied with Ayer. My first undergraduate tutor at Oxford, John Foster, had also been very close to Ayer. And he remained something like a Berkeleyan idealist until the end of his life. I was one of his first pupils. Through him, partly I became involved with Ayer. But then, Rorty was just charisma: his seminars were really quite extraordinary. His ability was to go to the heart of a philosophical issue and say “This is what is going on here”. So I have never regretted that change. I have never regretted leaving Oxford. LUCA CORTI & DIANA COUTO: Richard Rorty, one of the most influential philosophers of the century, was your PhD supervisor in Princeton. Did his philosophy have a signifi- cant impact on your work? MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Yes, very much, although I'm not a slavish disciple of Rorty. What I did get from him, and which I still think exemplifies my own work on skepticism in a way that makes it quite unusual, is that I don’t just look at it from the perspective of the contemporary literature. I have thought about its history and written about the contrast between ancient and modern skepticism and also why Descartes is an historical turning point. I have always re- tained that desire for an historical perspective which Rorty had. LUCA CORTI & DIANA COUTO: Apart from Rorty, did Sellars also have an impact on your work? What do you find so inspiring in his thought? MICHAEL WILLIAMS: My first book Groundless Belief (1977) was very influenced by Sellars, but by Sellars as filtered through Rorty. I was never a student of Sellars. In fact, I only met him once in my life when I was Assistant Professor at Yale. Sellars was invited to give a talk there and all he wanted after his talk was to have some drinks and a good dinner. Surprisingly, the only people who would go to dinner with him were myself and another young woman 3 Interview with Michael Williams philosopher of science who later became Dean at Harvard. So I met Sellars just that time, but I never discussed philosophy with him. LUCA CORTI & DIANA COUTO: Why were some philosophical problems (such as skepti- cism) more attractive to you than others? MICHAEL WILLIAMS: I don't know. I think that probably goes back to the people with whom I studied most as an undergraduate.
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